FSFE Newsletter - August 2011

Inside stories by a critical thinker

"If people do not understand why their computing is related to
their freedom, it’s because nobody explained them properly" (Bernhard
Reiter)

Bernhard Reiter is one of FSFE's founders and architect of the original German
team. He participated in setting
up three important Free Software organisations: FreeGIS.org, FFII, and
FossGIS. Besides that, he is founder and Executive Director of Intevation GmbH, a
company with exclusively Free Software products and services since 1999.

Become a Critical Thinker: Get Rid of "Intellectual Property"

A lot of people talk about "intellectual property". When using this term, they
usually mix different things like copyright, patents, trademarks, also right to a name,
utility patents, business models, or even geographical indications. If you want to
think critically and clearly about challenges in the digital age, you should
separate those different issues.

If you really need a term to cover all that, you should use one which is not
that much biased. There are some suggestions in the articles mentioned below, like the
term "Limited Intellectual Monopolies".

But in 90% cases there is actually only one monopoly concerned.
Discussions will be much more productive if everybody knows what you
are talking about. So, if someone says "we need more protection of "intellectual
property", ask them what that means, perhaps it means they want to have
software patents. If someone says "we need to limit the scope of "intellectual
property", you should ask if they want to restrain copyright, patents or even abolish trademarks.

Support FSFE in critical thinking

For FSFE it is important that all of you support us. This way our work does not depend on
single donors, and we can continue to think and communicate
critical to promote software freedom.

It is now possible to donate us
monthly and yearly by credit card and in Germany also by
direct debit. Beside that, in the Netherlands donations to FSFE can now be
deducted from income tax (before it was only possible in Germany and
Switzerland). If we get more than 20 new donors, your editor promises that he
will not write the word "critical" in the next newsletter.

Something completely different

PDFreaders.org. It is boring to
follow up bugs, but it does not take a lot of time and has a good effect. In
Italy volunteers again managed to close 13 bugs last month. Your editor gave
two talks in Brazil about the PDFreaders campaign to motivate
people to fix bugs in Latin America, and our UK
coordinator Sam Tuke is organising a PDFreaders bug hunt in Manchester. If
you live around, join other Free Software advocates on Saturday, August 13,
between 15.00-17.30 at MadLab
hackerspace to find and remove UK Government adverts for non-Free PDF
Readers. Cake and Pizza provided!

CERN launched its Open Hardware License 1.1 and Open Hardware
Repository. IBM promised to give its Lotus Symphony source code to the
Apache Foundation, and W3C wants to invalidate Apple's Widget software
patents. Read the legal news from 27.6.-3.7.4.7.-10.7., and 11.7.-18.7..

Brian
Gough has announced the GNU Hackers meeting which will take place on
25. August – 28. August in Paris. There are about 45 GNU maintainers
and contributors registered so far and speakers include Jim Meyering,
Stefano Zacchiroli, and Jim Blandy.

Why are students developing Free Software for the public sector? Read
in
Guido Arnold's weblog how students get involved in Free
Software.

Get active: Read and distribute "crime story"

"When
patents attack" is a good story from investigative journalists on
software patents, which reads like a crime story. Your editor recommends you
to read it so you have good arguments in future. If you like it, distribute
the article among your colleagues and friends.